Name: Bugonia (2025)
Genre: Comedy, Sci-Fi, Crime
Released: 2025-10-31
Rating: 7.5
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons

Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap a powerful CEO, believing she is an alien plotting to destroy Earth.

Bugonia (2025)

Times of India

The Indian Express

The term Bugonia refers to an ancient myth that describes “the spontaneous generation of bees from the carcass of a dead ox.” As strange as that sounds, the plot of this film is equally bizarre — and fascinating.
The story opens with Teddy explaining bee behaviour to his neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), whom he has completely indoctrinated. Together, they carry out one of the most audacious kidnappings imaginable, abducting Michelle Fuller, the ruthless CEO of Auxolith, a pharmaceutical giant developing radical and controversial drugs. Teddy is convinced Michelle is part of an alien species, the “Andromedans,” infiltrating Earth. He believes that during an upcoming lunar eclipse, her mothership will return — and that he’ll finally get an audience with its royal emperor. Driven by this delusion, Teddy subjects Michelle to psychological and physical torment, all while trying to justify his actions to Don.
Dark comedies this twisted depend heavily on stellar performances, and Bugonia delivers. While Will Tracy’s screenplay takes its time to build momentum, Yorgos Lanthimos extracts masterful performances from his leads. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are in peak form — she as the cold, commanding CEO who refuses to break, and he as the obsessive, unhinged idealist teetering between brilliance and madness. Their dynamic is electric, and they elevate even the most absurd moments into gripping, psychologically charged exchanges. Aidan Delbis adds emotional texture as the impressionable Don, grounding the chaos with quiet vulnerability.
Despite the strong performances, Bugonia occasionally falters under its own eccentricity. Some of Michelle’s captivity scenes drag, and the slow-burn pacing at times dulls the tension. The final act, though bizarrely poetic, doesn’t quite match the intensity of the buildup. A deeper dive into the characters’ backstories could have given the narrative more emotional weight.
Still, Lanthimos’s direction — amplified by Robbie Ryan’s stark, restrained cinematography and Jerskin Fendrix’s haunting score — creates an unsettling, theatrical world that’s both absurd and hypnotic.
In the end, Bugonia is less about aliens and more about us — a biting satire of corporate greed, blind faith, and the self-destructive absurdity of modern humanity. It’s weird, wild, and not meant to be fully understood — but it’s definitely hard to look away from.

Rarely has the world seemed as disparate, between “the winners” and “the losers”. How alienated do you feel?

That lies at the crux of this latest collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, a very gripping and au courant take on the modern fault lines animating America. Unlike A Battle After Another, which inhabited a similar landscape, it is more intimate though, and sadder.

Michelle (Stone) is the CEO of biomedical conglomerate Auxolith, gracing the covers of all the international magazines. The fact that she is a woman, thin and beautiful, rocking Louboutins and laboratories with similar confidence, helps.
Teddy (Plemons) and Don (Delbis) could not inhabit a world more different than Michelle’s. Two broken and broke cousins living together in an isolated house stuffed with memories from the past, feeding on that and the conspiracies playing on the loop on their phones.
Teddy is convinced Michelle is an “alien” from the planet Andromeda. A barely comprehending Don (played with aching vulnerability by Delbis, an actor on the autism spectrum) tags along, or is actually pulled along by Teddy, who needs at least one person to bounce off his incongruous ideas.

The plan that Teddy, a worker in Auxolith, whose assembly line job is to scan packages, has hatched is kidnapping Michelle to make her take him and Don to her “mothership” for a negotiation with “her emperor”. This is the only way to improve their lives and that of the others on Earth, Teddy tells Dan.

However, Michelle is not your usual abductee. High on her success, convinced of her superior intelligence compared to the Internet psychological babble Teddy is full of, she seethes with barely concealed contempt and anger. Even when she is trying to placate the increasingly unbalanced Teddy.
Stone is very, very good, as is Plemons. Neither of which is a surprise.

Nor is it a surprise that Lanthimos, in this remake of a Korean film, wants to not just stimulate you but bedazzle. It is impressive alright, the twist. Is it needed? Perhaps don’t ask that question.

BUGONIA - Official Trailer 2 [HD] - In Select Theaters October 24, Everywhere October 31

Bugonia (2025)

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